


The Family Business

by Deastar



Series: The Family Business [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character of Color, Gen, Kid Fic, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-14
Updated: 2009-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deastar/pseuds/Deastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"I don't want to pay you for sex," she said, in a tone of voice that implied that Dean was clearly the dumbest kid in the class. "I don't want a one-night stand," she told him condescendingly, "I want a sperm donor. Moron."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Family Business

**Author's Note:**

> Written over a year ago, so it has now been thoroughly Kripked. Consider it AU after season two.

Dean was used to the girls being all over him, but this chick was really _all_ over him. To be honest, it was kind of freaking him out. He felt a little weird about it, because, hey – the girl was totally hot, and pretty much throwing herself at him, two things he’d normally have no problem with. But this chick was really something else.

“I’m Jim,” Dean had told her, with his standard grin. “And you?”

“Desdemona,” the girl had said, in a warm throaty voice that made Dean shiver. She was only an inch or two shorter than him, and was, no argument, the finest girl in the bar, with all the smooth, toffee-colored skin on display that a man could want. They were in Reno, Nevada, and the bar was full of bleached-blond tourists, but this girl looked like a local.

Dean had not gotten two steps into the bar before this girl had attached herself to his arm, and he didn’t think she’d let him out of arm’s length all night. Sam, damn him, was watching everything with a big old grin on his face – it wasn’t often that he got to see Dean outmaneuvered by a girl.

Anyway, this Desdemona chick had been hinting – if practically climbing into Dean’s lap was hinting – that she’d kind of like to go someplace more private for the past twenty minutes, and Dean would normally have totally been on board with that plan. But something was just not _quite_ right about her. Nothing Dean could put his finger on. But it was definitely there.

Dean weighed his one hundred percent chance of getting laid against his – guesstimated – five or six percent chance of getting maimed, killed, or worst of all, castrated, by some kind of supernatural pagan goddess of Latina hotness, and decided, with great regret, to call it a night.

“Hey, listen, Desdemona,” Dean said, with another Winchester Special grin. “It’s been real, but it’s been a long day, so I’m heading out. Great to meet you, though. You seem like a real… nice… girl.”

“Are you sure?” she said, leaning forward just enough to give Dean a pretty spectacular view.

Dean was not sure, but he also didn’t want to die young, so he said that, yeah, he was sure, and knew he’d probably made the right decision when he saw the flash of frustration in her eyes before she covered it back up with flirtation. He signaled Sam, and they headed out into the parking lot.

As Dean unlocked the Impala, a woman’s voice shouted from behind him, “Jesus, Dean Winchester, what does a girl have to do?”

Dean and Sam both whirled around, and there stood Dean’s hot chick from the bar, glaring at him with both hands on her hips.

Dean shot Sam a wary glance. “I told you, my name is Jim-”

“Yeah, and I told you mine was _Desdemona_. I mean, come _on,_” Not-Desdemona said, rolling her eyes. “I know who you are, Dean – and you, too, Sam.” She sighed theatrically. “I was hoping to do this the old-fashioned way, but a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.”

She walked up to Dean and gave him a quick and disinterested once-over.

“I’ll give you five hundred bucks.”

The parking lot was absolutely silent. Finally, two sounds interrupted the quiet – Dean shouting, “Lady, are you _crazy_?!” and Sam cracking up with huge guffaws.

Dean was completely shocked and appalled – at least partly because he’d actually considered it for a minute. Hey, the girl was hot, and he probably would have done her anyway. But then again, she might be evil, and also, hello, _not a whore._

“Hello, _not a whore_,” he told the crazy lady.

She rolled her eyes again. “I don’t want to pay you for _sex_,” she said, in a tone of voice that implied that Dean was clearly the dumbest kid in the class. “I don’t want a one-night stand,” she told him condescendingly, “I want a _sperm donor_. Moron.”

Sam cracked up again while Dean just stood there and tried to process.

Not-Desdemona watched him try to cope.

“Well,” she said at last, “Thank God I’m not depending on your genes for the brains, that’s all I’ll say.”

Which of course sent Sam into another round of laughter while Dean tried to muster up some indignation, and mostly failed.

“What do you want _Dean’s_ DNA for?” Sam asked, still chuckling.

“Hey!”

Not-Desdemona nodded. “Good question. Well, obviously he’s very good-looking.” Dean preened. “In good health, remarkable stamina… but really, I’m mostly just after the demon blood.”

Sam goggled. Dean flipped.

“Okay, first, _what_?! Second, I don’t have any of this demon blood, crazy lady, so take that, Miss Smartypants, and third, _what_?!”

Sam was looking at the woman with new suspicion. “I think it’s time you told us who the hell you are.”

“I’m Catalina Morales,” she said, smiling. “It looks like we could all use another drink.”

 

~*~

 

The three of them relocated to another bar a few streets away, which was thankfully empty of dancing tourists. It was pretty obviously a local bar, a place for serious drunks to get seriously drunk.

Once they all had a bottle of their beer of choice, Dean prepared to pick up where they left off, but Catalina beat him to the punch.

“You do, actually. Have demon blood, that is.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. It went without saying that it would not be a good idea to correct the stranger lady’s mistake by telling her that, actually, that would be Sam.

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” she told them. “That Sam’s the one with the demon blood and the funky powers, and that you, Dean, are just Mr. Normal. That’s what you both badly want to believe. But on some level, you both know it’s not true.”

When Dean looked over at Sam, Sam wouldn’t meet his eyes. Dean turned back to Catalina just in time to get captured in her gaze.

“You’re lucky, Dean… too lucky. You always have been. You win at poker even though you can’t bluff for shit. You win at pool even though you’re not that good a shot, and you can always get the girls, even when they know better, even when they know you’re lying.” Her voice was low and hypnotic, and Dean couldn’t look away, couldn’t block out her words.

“And the lying – that’s another thing. You’re a pretty bad liar, Dean – Sam could tell you that – and yet, people seem to believe you anyway. Why is that? Why do people let you into their homes, ignore your worn-out clothes, your shaky backstories? Nothing overt. Nothing that can’t be explained away. You’re just lucky, is all. But that’s just the small stuff.”

Dean didn’t want to hear this, couldn’t believe a word of it, but he was caught by Catalina’s eyes.

“You always know when Sammy’s in trouble, don’t you? Always get there just in the nick of time. You know when he’s upset, when he’s hurt, when he’s angry, when he’s in danger – you know where he is, you know where to find him, you know how he feels, you can’t help but know… you always have.”

Dean’s breath was strangely uneven. Finally, finally, he could look away.

“What the hell makes you think-”

“Because it’s the same for me and my sister.”

Dean’s eyes flew back up to Catalina’s face, and he saw that Sam was just as startled as he was.

“That’s why I’m looking for a donor with demon blood,” Catalina said, shrugging. “Mine has always been pretty useful to me. I want my future kid to have every advantage in the world – natural and supernatural.”

Sam’s eyebrows pulled together. “So what is it that you can do? Are you telekinetic, telepathic, clairvoyant-”

“Oh, nothing exciting like that, Sam,” Catalina said, chuckling. “I’m just a protector, like Dean here.”

“A protector?” Dean asked.

Catalina’s gaze went a little unfocused, and she tilted her head down until Dean couldn’t see her eyes. “What, you never thought about it?” she asked, with a small, bitter laugh. “What all those gifts were there for? Just thought the demon had a few extra presents in his bag of toys, and handed ‘em around out of the goodness of his heart?” She shook her head. “You and I, Dean, all the older brothers and sisters – we were given the abilities that we would need in order to make sure that people like Sam here and my little sister Sol would survive long enough to be useful to Señor Ojos-Amarillos. The only children, the singletons, like Max Miller and Scott Carey – they had a nasty habit of dying young and uselessly.”

She looked up at them again, and her eyes were dry.

“It’s what we were born for, Dean – to protect our siblings, whatever the cost. You fulfilled your purpose… I failed mine,” she finished, her voice low and rough.

Dean looked away, uncomfortable. He was seriously starting to wish he had just taken her up on her offer back when she was still Desdemona the dangerous Latina hottie – this shit was too rich for his blood. Sam, of course, was fascinated, asking her about her mother (a heinous bitch, apparently), her mother’s death (standard stuck-to-the-ceiling nursery fire, no tears lost from Catalina or anybody else about it), why she hadn’t shown up on Ash’s search (both parents illegals, deaths never reported to police), and her sister’s gifts (telekinetic).

“Can we get back to the part where you were offering me $500 to sleep with you?” Dean finally interrupted.

Catalina gave him a disdainful look. “Oh, that ship has sailed, Winchester. It’s turkey basters and jizz-in-a-cup time now.”

Sam, of course, had to do his lawyer thing.

“What is the nature of the agreement that you’re offering Dean? Will he be called upon to be financially responsible? Will he be listed as the father on the birth certificate? Will he be expected to be active in the child’s life?”

“No, no, and hell, no,” Catalina said, rolling her eyes. “You think I want Crude McWitless over here teaching my kid to chug beer and leer at floozies? Or paying child support with fake credit cards? Think again, Winchester.”

“Hey!” Dean felt unjustly accused.

“I’m sorry, Winchester, do you have heretofore unexpressed ambitions of fatherhood?” Catalina asked, lifting a sardonic eyebrow.

“No,” Dean replied indignantly, “but A) I would make an awesome dad and B) what’s wrong with beer and floo- uh… ladies?”

Catalina looked smugly at Sam. “I rest my case.”

While the two of them hammered out the details, Dean wandered over to the bar and nursed his beer and his thoughts.

Dean had thought about kids – about having kids of his own, that is – every once in a while, especially after he found Ben, but never in any serious kind of way. Even in the vision of his perfect life that the jinn had given him, he and his imaginary girlfriend were childless, and happy that way.

It wasn’t that Dean didn’t like kids – hell, Dean thought kids were the greatest. It was just that Dean had always had a pretty clear picture of what his life was gonna look like, and the white-picket fence and two-point-five kids had never really fit in with that. That was always Sam’s dream, not his.

“Hey, crazy lady,” he called over to the table where Sam and Catalina were still arguing in low voices.

“What, Winchester?”

Dean walked back to the table, keeping his voice down.

“Why don’t you just ask Sam for his little swimmers? He’s got more freaky powers than me anyway, and he’s Mr. Responsible Family Man, too.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“I thought about it,” Catalina replied frankly. “But I… I’ve had enough of Grand Destiny,” she said, and her face was twisted with bitterness. “Grand Destiny, far as I can tell, is good for one thing and one thing only – getting people killed. And you, kid,” she looked at Sam with something like sadness. “You’ve got Grand Destiny oozing out of your pretty pores. I wish you the best of luck with it, and I hope it’s done with you by now, but I can’t take the chance. I don’t want that shit anywhere near my baby.”

The table was quiet, all three of them looking at anything but each other. Dean thought about Sammy when he was little, before they knew any of this, back when he was just Dean’s geeky little brother who loved old books and sappy movies. Back when they were a family, all three of them, Dean and Sammy and Dad, and couldn’t imagine being without each other. Dad – in the privacy of his own head, Dean could admit that Dad hadn’t been the best father ever for Sammy. They were just too different in all the worst ways and too alike in all the hardest. But looking at Sam now, so strong and so smart, and doing the best he could even when the world beat him down… well, Dean knew in his heart that he wouldn’t change it all even if he could. Dad wasn’t perfect, but he’d been a hell of a lot better than no father at all, and in the end, he’d raised a good man, a good son. Dean couldn’t regret that.

“I want to see it,” Dean blurted out. “The baby. When it’s born. And, you know, after. Not like all the time. Just… you know. I want to be there.”

Sam was giving him an odd look, and Catalina’s gaze was tinged with… well, if Dean didn’t know better, he’d say that somewhere under the surprise and skepticism was a little glint of respect.

Sam recovered quickly.

“I know that wasn’t part of our original negotiations,” Sam began.

“No, no… It’s okay,” Catalina interrupted. “It’s not a problem. We’re talking about, what – a couple times a year?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “That sounds right. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, actually,” Catalina said, sounding a little bemused. “That’s actually… Yes. That sounds fine.”

After that, Sam and Catalina spent another few minutes hashing out the specifics, but in the end, Dean got handed a plastic cup and shooed off to the restroom. He thought about Catalina while he jerked off, in the spirit of petty revenge.

Catalina offered him the five hundred bucks, but he felt like that would probably be a pretty shitty idea if he was going to actually be seeing the kid for the rest of his life. God knows how it would fuck the poor kid up to find out that Mommy had to pay Daddy for her baby.

In the end, they exchanged phone numbers and promised to call each other with regular reports – Catalina on the pregnancy, Dean and Sam on their continued survival. Dean promised to stick around the western half of the country for the next few weeks in case Catalina needed another donation, and Catalina promised to email Sam the ultrasound images.

And then Sam and Dean left for their hotel room, and Catalina started the drive back to Sacramento, where she lived when she wasn’t trolling for demonic sperm donors. It was kind of anticlimactic, Dean thought. Not that he was complaining. He was still pretty grateful that she hadn’t turned out to be evil.

Well, not, like, supernatural evil, anyway. Dean was still pretty sore about the beer and floozies crack.

 

~*~

 

And that was supposed to be it. But after sticking around the Southwest for a month in case Catalina needed Dean’s services again, he and Sam had kind of gotten in the habit. And if they happened to be in California for a haunting, it only made sense to stop by Sacramento and help Catalina get the apartment set up for the baby, or go with her to the doctor’s office. Sometimes Sam would drop Dean off in Sacramento and head down to Palo Alto to visit Jessica’s grave. Sometimes both of them would show up just in time to be put to work constructing a high chair, or a crib or a playpen, an exercise which usually ended with the pair of them sitting sprawled on the floor of the nursery, surrounded by a sea of tiny plastic parts, squinting with confusion at a sheet of directions the size of a small blanket, covered in instructions clearly not written by a native speaker of English, and possibly not even by a native resident of Earth.

Six months in, while Dean and Sam were puzzling over an unreasonably complex set of shelves for the nursery, Catalina yelled for them to “come here, come here, hurry, hurry,” in a tone of voice that made Dean and Sam grab for their guns. When they got to the kitchen, out of breath, weapons at the ready, Catalina just gave them both a withering look, and pointed at her swollen belly.

“Kicking,” she said, simply. “I thought you might want to feel it.”

Dean immediately dropped to his knees in front of her, holding his hand out just a few millimeters away from her skin. He looked up, waiting for permission, and Catalina nodded, looking at him with something verging on fondness. Gently, so gently, he settled his hand onto the stretched skin of her belly, feeling every point of contact, from the tips of his fingers to the center of his palm. He held perfectly still, hardly breathing, waiting, waiting… there!

“Holy shi – cr – um…” He looked up at Catalina again, mutely. “Wow,” he finally said. He felt like a dumbass, but Catalina just smiled at him and said, “Yeah.”

Dean noticed Sam was still hanging back in the doorway, and gestured impatiently for him to come closer. Sam came within a foot of Catalina, but then stopped again and just sort of hovered, his hand twitching as if he wanted to reach out, but didn’t dare.

Dean just made a frustrated noise, grabbing Sam’s hand and pressing it to Catalina’s belly himself. He held Sam’s hand there, waiting, and eventually…

“Oh my God,” Sam whispered, wearing a goofy grin that Dean would totally make fun of later. “That’s… that’s really amazing.”

“I know,” Catalina said smugly, as if she were somehow responsible, which, Dean had to admit, she kind of was.

“I helped,” Dean insisted, and Catalina rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, Winchester, what a sacrifice. You might have sprained your poor little wrist.”

“You two are probably traumatizing the baby for life, you know,” Sam commented. He moved to take his hand back and Dean let him.

“I’m going to the doctor tomorrow,” Catalina said. “They’re going to tell me if it’s a boy or a girl. Want to come?”

 

~*~

 

Dean and Sam had been to the doctor’s office with Catalina a couple of times before, and she’d never seemed nervous before. Sitting in the waiting room between him and Sam, Catalina was jittery as all hell, and not too good at hiding it, either. When Sam got up to hit the men’s room, Dean nudged her.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing’s up,” Catalina said, annoyed, not fooling anybody.

“You’re freaking.”

“I…” Catalina sighed, looking put upon. “I always asked them, before, not to tell me the sex. I just… as long as I didn’t know, it was just… it’s stupid.”

Sam said that a lot when he talked about this kind of stuff, so Dean knew to be quiet and wait her out.

“I thought if I didn’t know if it was a boy or girl, and something went wrong, it wouldn’t hurt as much,” Catalina said quietly. “And now I’m going to know. I’m going to start looking at names, at little baby clothes, at…”

Dean stayed silent, waiting.

“It’ll be real,” Catalina whispered. “And I want that, I do. But it scares me, too.”

Dean figured that if he tried to hold her hand, he had about a fifty percent chance of getting smacked, but he couldn’t really think of anything else to do, so he tried it anyway. Catalina did not, in fact, smack him. She didn’t exactly snuggle up to him, either, but at least she didn’t look like she was about to cry anymore. Sam, of course, was good at this kind of emotional shit – when he came back from the bathroom, he sat right back down on Catalina’s other side and picked up her free hand, holding on to it as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

When the nurse called them back to the exam room, she gave them a little extra smile – the whole clinic thought that Sam and Dean were Catalina’s gay-for-each-other best friends, which Dean thought was pretty weird, but it was better than trying to explain the whole demon-blood-sperm-donor-slash-in-loco-parent-slash-Catalina’s-punching-bag-and-crib-builder-and-tire-changer-and-weird-craving-grocery-store-runner thing. Luckily no one had ever asked them exactly what their deal was – Dean wasn’t sure what he would have said if they had.

Dean and Sam had been to the doctor with Catalina before, but they had never been there for an ultrasound appointment before, and when the ultrasound technician announced “It’s a girl,” Dean wasn’t really paying attention. His brain was still stuck on a mantra of _Oh my God, it’s moving! Oh my God, it’s alive! Oh my God, there’s a fucking baby in there!_

Catalina smacked him.

“Winchester! That’s your daughter in there! Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

Dean tried to pull together the scraps of his brain.

“Um… she’s… pretty?” Dean hazarded. What the hell were people supposed to say in these kinds of situations?! “She… uh… looks like you?” he tried.

Catalina smacked him again. “Oh, thanks, Winchester – she looks like a tadpole!”

“She does not!”

Catalina’s expression softened a little. “No, she doesn’t,” she agreed. Her head popped up, and she hailed Sam, who was folded into the far corner of the exam room.

“Sam! You have social skills! Come admire my child!”

“She’s very beautiful,” Sam said, with perfect sincerity, making Catalina beam and Dean roll his eyes.

“This goop is disgusting,” Catalina commented, poking at the gel the technician was wiping off of her abdomen.

“It looks like ectoplasm,” Dean volunteered. The technician gave him a weird look. “Uh, that is, if ectoplasm were real. That’s how I, you know, _imagine_ it would look.”

“Spend a lot of time fantasizing about ectoplasm, do you, Dean?” Catalina asked, raising an eyebrow.

Dean rolled his eyes and said, with poorly-hidden affection, “Bitch.”

“Jerk,” said Sam.

“Whore,” said Catalina.

“Excuse me, _what_?!” said the appalled-looking technician.

“Maybe you guys better not come to the doctor with me anymore,” Catalina told the pair of them after they escaped the technician’s disapproving glare.

 

~*~

 

It was an empty threat. As Catalina’s due date got closer and closer, Sam and Dean dropped by more often – close to once a week toward the end of month seven. After they’d constructed absolutely every possible piece of furniture that the baby might need from birth until, oh, _puberty_, Catalina sat them down for what threatened to become a serious discussion.

“So, I’m looking at names,” Catalina began.

Dean said, “Jessica,” and Sam said, “Mary,” almost simultaneously.

“I was thinking Isabel,” said Catalina, raising an eyebrow at the pair of them. “Nice, normal Latina name, not associated with anybody’s dead relatives or any Scientologists or any serial killers. In fact, what I meant when I said I was looking at names was… ‘I’m going to name the baby Isabel, that better be okay with everyone.’”

Dean looked at Sam. Sam looked at Dean. They shrugged.

“Works for me,” Dean said.

“Isabel is a beautiful name,” Sam said.

Catalina smiled. “Good.” Her face took on a more serious cast. “Mary… was your mother’s name, correct?” They nodded. “But Jessica… I don’t think I’m familiar with anyone of that name, Dean. Who is she?”

Dean was silent. It wasn’t his answer to give.

“Jessica is…” Sam’s voice broke and he started again. “Jessica is the woman whose grave I visit in Palo Alto. She was my girlfriend when I went to Stanford. She was killed by the same demon that killed our mother. And… your mother and your sister, I guess.”

“I’m so sorry, Sam,” Catalina said quietly.

“Thank you,” Sam replied, equally quietly.

They sat in silence for a minute, and then Catalina said carefully, “I was thinking… maybe I would leave the middle name up to you two. Within reason,” she added, glaring at Dean.

Dean could see that she was trying to pull Sam out of his funk, and he was happy to help.

“Spike,” he volunteered. “Isabel Spike Morales. That’s classic. Or Roxie. I’m a big fan of Roxie. Oh, I know – Desdemona. A child should be connected with her history, you know?”

Catalina growled at him, but Sam smiled, so Dean counted it as a win.

The next day, early in the morning, as Dean and Sam were getting ready to head out – to La Tuna, New Mexico, for a Woman in White – Catalina pulled them aside and said, “Isabel Maria Morales. Is that… is that good?”

Dean looked over at Sam, but Sam’s face was blank, giving him nothing. _Cagey bastard_, Dean thought. He noticed Catalina was starting to look a little worried, and he risked a careful touch to her cheek.

“It’s great,” Dean told her, and meant it. “If Mom was still around… well, she’d be… I think it would make her really happy.”

Catalina’s smile was sad but real.

“Good,” she said. “That’s good.”

“Don’t get killed!” she called after them on their way out the door.

“I think she likes me,” Dean told Sam.

“In your dreams,” Sam snorted.

They were okay.

 

~*~

 

In all the months since Dean had been accosted in a bar in Reno by the woman who would turn out to be the mother of his child, a lot of things had changed for him and Sam. They hardly ever went east of the Mississippi anymore, and they had something resembling a home base for the first time since the Roadhouse burned down. They knew what foods not to talk about in front of a pregnant woman, and how to find folic acid in any drug store in five minutes or less. There were things that they talked about now – the future, and Family with a capital F.

And there were things they didn’t talk about – like _really_ didn’t talk about. Well, not _things_ so much as _thing,_ singular.

A month after Reno, a shaman in Oregon had locked Sam’s spirit into a redwood tree, and Dean had to do all the research himself, finding the spell to set Sam free and break the shaman’s power. When Sam was free, he ribbed Dean about his crappy library skills and his lame spellcasting. Neither of them said a word about how Dean had known exactly which tree, out of a grove of hundreds, should be the target of the spell.

Two months after that, a mischievous imp had sealed Sam’s mouth shut two days after a black dog had clawed open his shoulder. Dean had to hunt down the imp on his own – Sam’s shoulder had gone septic, and he had needed a hospital. When Sam got his voice back, he talked nonstop for hours, but he never said a word about how Dean had known the shoulder was septic when Sam hadn’t even known himself, hadn’t been able to tell Dean when he noticed the wound felt hot and itchy.

Sam and Dean were Winchesters – that meant that they were champions in the fine art of denial. But just because they weren’t talking about it didn’t mean that Dean wasn’t thinking about it – he didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help it.

Dean didn’t like doing research by himself, but he could when he had to. The night after he killed the imp, he told Sam he was going to a bar and hit the library instead. Sam had carefully noted down in Dad’s journal everything that he remembered about the other psychic kids who had ended up in Cold Oak with him, and Dean didn’t need more than Google to get the answer he wanted – well, the answer he was looking for. It most definitely wasn’t the answer he _wanted_.

Jake Talley, survived by his older sister, Sharon Talley, of Philadelphia. Andy, of course, had his twin. Ava’s older sister June had dived into a freezing lake to save her six-year-old sister – June had moved to China after college to teach English, and Dean wondered if she had known, even half a world away, the moment when her sister died. _Like I did_, Dean thought, finally admitting that what he had felt kneeling in the rain when the last breath had left Sam’s lips – that flash of devastating, stabbing pain – might have been more than grief.

After all that, Dean almost didn’t want to look up Lily – Lily Kirov, as it turned out. She was easy to find – when she was a junior in high school, her big brother Tom had stepped in front of a school shooter’s bullet, saving her life. He had died instantly.

Dean stared at the screen as the library’s PA system told him that the place would be closing in five minutes. He felt sick. He fumbled blindly for his cell phone, reached for the key that would speed-dial Sam’s phone, but Sam was asleep, and Dean didn’t want to wake him, not for this.

Dean packed up his things, shoved his phone in his pocket and left the library. As he dropped into the seat of the Impala, he broke out in a cold sweat.

_I don’t want to wake him,_ Dean thought. _But when I left him, he was still awake, and it’s not that late. Why would I assume that he’s – _Dean madly scrambled for his phone, dialing Sam and waiting for four rings before he heard Sam’s mumbled “H’lo?”

“Did I wake you?” Dean asked, heart pounding.

“Wha’s it soun’ like, jerk?”

“Sorry, Sammy. Go back to sleep,” Dean said unsteadily.

“Dean? Y’okay?”

Dean forced his voice into smoothness.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Sam. Go back to sleep. I’ll be back soon.”

After that, Dean wanted nothing more than to get totally wasted, but he knew the hospital wouldn’t let him in to see Sam tonight if he was smashed. So he was the good responsible brother for the next week, taking calls from Catalina, looking for cases, nursing Sam back to health, the whole shebang.

At the end of the week, with Sam safely tucked away in a motel room lined with salt, Dean went on what was, even for him, an utterly epic bender. When he finally stumbled home that night, Sam’s eyes were closed and his breathing was steady, so Dean figured that it was safe to tell him.

“’L always take care ‘a you, Sammy… always have, can’t help it, tha’s me, just… don’ wanna letcha down, ‘s all.”

“You’re drunk,” the supposedly sleeping Sam told him, sounding disgusted.

Dean laughed, wincing at the jagged sound of it.

“’Sright – drunk off my goddamn ass, half-unconscious, totally plastered, prob’ly halfway goddamn blind, an’ you know what, Sammy?” Dean wheezed a laugh that was half-sob. “I c’n _still_ feel your heart beating.”

Sam froze. Neither of them said a thing. After a minute, Dean laughed one last time, then collapsed into his bed, clothes, shoes and all. When they woke up in the morning, it was back to the old Winchester standbys of denial, banter, and more denial. But Dean didn’t forget what he’d learned. He couldn’t. Even when he tried.

 

~*~

 

When Dean had offered to go to Lamaze classes with Catalina and she had laughed so hard she’d given herself hiccups and told him “no thanks,” Dean hadn’t really thought much about it, except that he was pretty relieved to have gotten out of it. If Dean had been thinking a little more clearly about it, he probably would have put up more of a fight, because knowing Lamaze would at least have given him something to do in the delivery room besides stand there looking like a tool while Catalina screamed at the top of her lungs about how much she hated him, hated babies, hated him, hated God, and most of all, hated _him_.

Dean had been driving from a wendigo hunt in Montana to a chupacabra in Nevada when Sam got the call. Even with speakerphone off, Dean could hear Catalina yelling, “Tell Winchester he has two hours! One minute more, and his testicles are forfeit!”

Sam’s face went white, probably more worried about Catalina than about Dean’s testicles. _Shows you where his priorities are_, Dean grumbled in his head.

“Your water broke?” Sam asked unsteadily. “You’re not supposed to be due for a week!”

“Well, it looks like this baby is an ornery bitch – LIKE HER FATHER!” Catalina shrieked, with extra volume for Dean’s benefit.

Sam coughed. “Uh… Catalina… you may not want to call your unborn baby a bitch in front of hospital personnel… just a thought.”

“Of course not, how dumb do you think I am, Sam? I’m not at the hospital yet, and the cabbie sure as hell doesn’t care! This is Sacramento, he probably doesn’t even speak English!”

They were about five minutes out of Patrick, Nevada, and when Dean gently touched the gas pedal to the floor of the Impala, silently apologizing to her, it was because he wanted to be there to experience the joyous miracle of birth and support the mother of his child. It definitely wasn’t that he was scared of Catalina. Because he wasn’t.

 

~*~

They made it with three minutes to spare. Catalina’s hospital scrubs were already sticking to her with sweat, and she glared straight at Dean.

“About time,” she declared. Her face softened. “Hi, Sam.”

“Hi, Catalina. How are you feeling? How close are the contractions?”

Dean left his women to talk about women things and peered out the doorway. He’d always been pretty uncomfortable in hospitals, but, hey – at least this time nobody was bleeding. In fact, in just a couple hours, he might be a dad.

_No pressure or anything_, Dean thought nervously. When he turned back around and Catalina caught sight of the look on his face, she scowled.

“Oh, no you don’t, Winchester. No one is allowed to be nervous in this room but me – your job is to crack wise and be the target of my anguished hatred, should the need occur. You think you can do that?”

“Sure,” said Dean, who figured she was joking.

She wasn’t.

Which was how Dean ended up clutching Catalina’s right hand, trying his best not to glimpse any of the actual baby-popping action, dodging curses and insults, and pretty desperately wishing Catalina had taken him up on those Lamaze classes.

By this point, Catalina had been in labor for nineteen hours and she was Not Amused. Dean had been clutching her sweaty hand and privately freaking out for about ten of those hours and was Borderline Batshit. Sam, of course, was handling it all very well, soothing Catalina by reciting the California Penal Code to her (_Freaks,_ Dean thought affectionately), and handling all the medical stuff that Catalina was way too strung out to think about anymore.

“Sam, I’ve changed my mind,” Catalina was gasping. “I don’t wanna have a baby anymore. Go back and fix it for me, okay? Travel back in time nine months and kill Dean before he jerks off into that little cup and ruins my life, okay? You can do that for me, Sam, can’t you? You won’t mind, right?”

“Sure, sure,” Sam murmured soothingly. Dean glared. Sam rolled his eyes. Dean continued glaring. Sam glared right back and told Catalina, “It’d be my pleasure.”

Catalina clenched Dean’s hand extra hard and asked him, “What evil schizophrenic hypnotist mugged me in a back alley and put the fuckwitted idea in my head that _you_, you midget-dicked, bitty-baby-bluebird-brained, piss-poor half-assed excuse for an emotionally retarded, epically maladjusted adolescent con job and village idiot, could have anything with even the smallest iota of value to offer a child of mine from your admittedly kiddy-pool shallow end of the great gene pool of humanity?”

None of the medical personnel even flinched. During hours one through maybe a dozen, they had been visibly impressed by the ingenuity and sheer virtuosity of Catalina’s insult parade, but by now, it was all old news to them – and to Dean, although he was offended at the shallow gene pool part, on Sam’s behalf.

“There’s nothing wrong with my gene pool,” Dean shot back, but even he had to admit it was a weak effort. Witty banter was never supposed to be some kind of marathon endurance sport, and Dean was in the process of finding out why.

“Besides the fact that a flatworm couldn’t drown in it?” Catalina said waspishly.

Dean fell back on the one thing he knew would reliably drive her crazy.

“Oh, don’t be like that, baby,” he told her, with his most winning smile.

“Go die,” she told him, in perfect seriousness. “Go d-d-oh, _fuck_!”

Dean kind of lost track of the witty banter at that point, because, hello, _baby_, and also, _thank you God, it’s finally over_, plus, seriously, _BABY._

The baby was whisked away and whisked back and then whisked away again before Dean ever had the chance to catch his breath. Catalina seemed satisfied, though, so Dean assumed that all the fingers and toes were in the right places. He kind of wanted to ask, but felt stupid every time he tried. Finally, he settled for pulling Sam out into the hallway. Sam watched Dean patiently as Dean tried to put together his thoughts.

“Did she-? Does she…?”

“Dean. Spit it out.”

“_Dude_,” Dean said, agonized. “Does she have, y’know… all the… fingers and stuff? That babies should have?”

Sam didn’t laugh, which was probably a sign of how wrecked Dean must have looked.

“Yeah, Dean,” Sam said, grasping Dean’s shoulders and giving him a soft smile. “She’s perfect. Everything about her is perfect.”

Dean suddenly needed to sit down, and when Sam carefully guided him to the edge of Catalina’s bed, he discovered that he actually really needed to lie down, too, and when Sam gently settled him on his side, spooned around Catalina’s exhausted little curl, Dean realized that he suddenly also really needed some goddamn sleep.

 

~*~

 

When Dean woke up, he could hear Sam and Catalina talking quietly, as if they were trying not to wake him up.

“So what do you think?” Sam was teasing. “Bet you can’t wait to do it all over again.”

Catalina growled and made gagging noises.

“Seriously, though,” Sam said. “Do you think you’d ever want to… do it again?”

“You know, not everything is a competition between you and Dean,” Catalina said dryly. “I’m not having another kid just so you and Dean are even.”

Sam sputtered and Catalina laughed softly.

“Honestly? If you’d asked me six months ago, or even one month ago, I’d have thought you were crazy. Sol and I…” Dean was still curled up to Catalina’s side, and he felt her sigh. “I would’ve told you that I’d rather raise my baby on the North Pole than with a sibling. Now, though…”

Catalina trailed off, and neither of them said anything for a few long minutes. Finally Sam said, “What changed your mind?”

“You did. Dean did.” Catalina laughed. “Something else I never thought I’d say. But you and Dean… you draw such strength from each other. You make each other better men.”

There was a brief silence.

“Oh, look, that’s cute – blushing.”

“Shut up,” Sam muttered.

Dean cracked an eyelid open to see Sam’s blush.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Catalina told him, looking highly amused. “You know, poor little Isabel has only been alive for about twenty-four hours, and she’s still less of a pussy than you. The nurses tell me she’s been kicking and screaming non-stop, and here you are, sacked out like a dead dog.”

“Fuck you, too,” Dean groused.

“She’s real healthy,” Catalina said, in a softer tone of voice. “Her tests are all clear and everybody’s saying she seems really strong. You’ve got better sperm than I gave you credit for, Winchester.”

“Hell, yeah,” Dean mumbled.

“I, ah…” Catalina hesitated. “Oh, what the hell. I was thinking of… of putting your name on the birth certificate after all, Winchester. If you want. It doesn’t mean you have to stick around or give me money or anything. Just… hell.” She looked frustrated. “Do you want to or not?”

Dean craned his head around to look at Sam, whose expression was giving him exactly nothing.

“Sam?” Dean said impatiently. “Come on, do your lawyer mojo. What do I do?”

“That’s up to you, Dean,” Sam said, with the same irritating blankness. Dean stared him down, trying to burn the words _I’ll figure you out, just wait and see_ onto Sam’s brain.

“Yeah,” Dean said, defiantly. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

Catalina rolled her eyes, but Dean could see she was happy.

“Don’t go thinking this means I like you or anything,” she told him.

“Whatever, crazy woman, you love me,” Dean said, drifting back to sleep.

Somehow Sam, Dean, Catalina and Isabel eventually escaped from the hospital and ended up back in Catalina’s apartment, which suddenly seemed like the most dangerous place on Planet Earth. There were sockets in the walls! Splinters in the wood! Was the traffic noise too loud? What if they couldn’t hear her crying? What if she fell out of her crib?

“What if I drop her?” Dean hissed at Sam in their first free minute alone. He’d have been embarrassed by how high-pitched and panicky he sounded, except that Sam’s eyes kept darting to the doors and windows every thirty seconds or so, like he expected a werewolf to come rampaging through.

“Salt,” Sam muttered, ignoring Dean totally. “I need salt. And herbs. And chalk. And Valium.”

“The Valium, yes,” Catalina said, from behind Sam, scaring the shit out of Sam and Dean. “The salt, herbs, and chalk, no. Do you really think I’d bring Isabel home here if it wasn’t covered with all the strongest protections I could make, beg, or steal? There’s holy water and dissolved salt in the paint and the varnish, iron nails in the frames, and more spells, incantations, charms and witchery in these walls than you can shake a stick at.”

“Literally?” Dean asked.

“I can’t believe I actually encouraged you to reproduce,” Catalina moaned.

 

~*~

 

Catalina got the idea in her head that, since there were three of them, they could sleep in staggered eight hour shifts so that Isabel could have two caretakers at every moment of the day or night. This plan worked really well, except for the fact that every time the baby started crying, all three of them would rocket up out of their beds or chairs and dash for the nursery, no matter whose shift it was supposed to be. Catalina grumbled that the famous Winchester paranoia ruined the most efficient parenting plan ever created, but she was just as guilty as they were and they all knew it, so she had the decency to keep the bitching to a minimum.

It took about a week for all of them to get so exhausted that they could actually sleep through Isabel’s crying, and nine days after Isabel came home from the hospital, with Catalina sacked out in her bedroom on top of the covers, and Sam sprawled all over the couch with his boots still on, Dean realized, standing over Isabel’s crib at 3:00 in the morning, that it was the first time he’d been alone with her since she was born.

Carefully, carefully, carefully, Dean scooped little Isabel up from her crib and settled himself in the rocking chair in the nursery to introduce himself.

She had mostly stopped crying, just little leftover sniffles now and little watery eyes that Dean could swear were looking right at him, even though Sam told him that Isabel couldn’t really focus on anything yet. She was a pretty baby, Dean thought – not that he was biased at all. Little Isabel had skin the color of honey, and a wispy tuft of black hair that was sticking straight up right now, pointing at Dean reproachfully.

“Isabel Maria Morales,” Dean whispered. “Hi, Isabel Maria Morales. My name’s Dean. I’m your dad. Sort of.”

Isabel’s nose wrinkled, and she started to sob again, slowly and pitifully.

“Oh, no, hey!” Dean said, panicked, “Don’t cry, baby, I didn’t mean it that way! I’m your dad, I am, all the way, I’m on the certificate and everything, all right?”

Dean bounced his legs a little, and petted her silly hair, and she calmed down again.

“You throw a pretty good tantrum, huh?” Dean said, smiling. “Like Sammy that way. Sammy is…” Dean trailed off. Isabel twisted her little body around, putting her head on its side like she was saying “Is…? Is what? Come on!”

“Sammy is…” Dean sighed. “Sammy is your other dad, okay? But not in a gay way. He’s also kind of your uncle. It’s complicated. But he loves you, and he’s going to take care of you, so you’re extra lucky, because a lot of kids only get one mom and one dad, but you get a mom and _two_ dads, and if your mommy gets married, then you’ll have a mom and _three_ dads, wouldn’t that be cool?”

Isabel blinked at him.

“Well, _I_ think it would be cool,” Dean muttered. “Dads are…” Dean paused again. “Dads are great,” he finished softly. “I wish you could meet _my_ dad, Isabel. I wish _he _could meet _you_.”

Isabel made a sort of a moo-ing noise.

“I’m gonna take that as a yes,” Dean said. “Y’know, for a baby, you’ve got a lot of opinions. Very opinionated baby.”

Isabel wrinkled her nose.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” Dean said hurriedly. “I guess you get that from all sides. Your mom – she’s pretty much the queen of opinions. She’s got opinions on stuff she’s never even heard of. She’ll be a good mom, though.”

Dean petted Isabel’s little head-tuft again.

“Well, baby, it’s been real. You’re probably pretty tired, so I’m gonna put you back in your little bed now, but, um… I love you,” Dean whispered really quietly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d said that. To Sammy, probably, but when? Had he, ever? Well, he didn’t need to, anyway. Sam knew.

Dean kissed Isabel’s forehead and put her back in her crib, tucking her little blanket around her. As he walked out of the nursery to the spare bedroom to get some sleep of his own, he saw that Sam was right on the couch where he had been before – but his boots were off.

Dean wondered how much Sam’d heard while he was awake, but he refused to be embarrassed. Talking to babies was normal, whatever. Everybody talked to babies. He couldn’t be held responsible for anything he said to a baby – they couldn’t understand him anyway.

 

~*~

 

It turned into a little bit of a tradition – Dean taking the night shift with Isabel, stopping her crying with stories about Sam growing up, or his less-scary hunting stories. She was a good listener – sometime she even laughed at his jokes, which was more than Sam could be counted on to do, the little bitch. Sure, it wasn’t because she _understood_ them, but Dean took what he could get.

He knew that sometimes Sam or Catalina would lurk outside the door and listen in, but their creepy behavior totally wasn’t his problem. He was just there to spend a little quality time with his baby girl, and if he happened to tell embarrassing stories about Sam’s teenage years when Catalina was eavesdropping, it was only justice.

Dean was happy – he had a routine. He stayed up with Isabel at night, slept all morning, then spent the afternoon and the evening working out, training, and – if he was lucky – cleaning up small time ghosts and cursed objects around the city. Sacramento had never been so safe, Isabel was crying less and less, and Catalina and Sam were both really happy. Of course Dean still hit on Catalina every couple of days, as crudely as possible, just on principle, but by now it was just another part of Dean’s happy routine.

Which was why Dean was kind of thrown when Catalina told him and Sam that they were free to go… in Dean’s mind, they’d always been free to go.

“We’re not your nannies, you know,” he told her.

“That’s kind of my point,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You guys have a real life, and I’m extremely grateful that you both stuck around for this long, but Isabel’s mostly sleeping through the night now – when you’re not keeping her up – ” she said, glaring half-heartedly at Dean, “so you can get back to making the world a safer place.”

“Right,” Dean said, still a little off-balance, “Real life. Yeah. Sounds good.”

“I thought it might,” Catalina said, smiling affectionately. “You’re not meant for staying in one place, Winchester – to be honest, I’m surprised you made it this long.”

Which didn’t hurt Dean at all – she was right, of course she was right. Dean was born a ramblin’ man, and he liked it that way. So what if Sam and Catalina had pretty much made Dean’s decision for him? It was the right decision. It was time for him and Sam to get back to doing what they do best.

Sam packed them both up, gassed up the Impala, and they planned to head out in the morning for Tallahassee, where, according to Bobby, undead alligators were attacking unsuspecting citizens.

That night, Dean took his last night shift with Isabel, but when he carried her over to the rocking chair and set her gently on his lap, he couldn’t think of anything to say. For once, Isabel didn’t seem to have any opinion either, and the two of them just sat there, watching each other.

At some point, Catalina tip-toed softly into the room, and stood over them, not saying anything, just watching. At about 2:00 AM, Dean caught himself starting to doze and rested Isabel back in her crib, taking a little longer to tuck her in than usual, brushing the backs of his fingers against her soft cheeks, her silly little tuft of hair, her tiny, curling ears. He joined Catalina in the hallway and closed the door behind him.

His voice was hoarse, and he didn’t feel much like talking, but he had to ask.

“Can we… can I… come back? Sometime?”

Dean couldn’t see Catalina’s face much in the dark, but he could hear her indrawn breath, quick and sharp.

“Of course,” she said, in a low voice. “Of course, as much as you…” She trailed off, paused, straightened her shoulders, and started again. “You sure as hell better, Winchester.” For some reason, her voice sounded scratchy instead of stern. “Every time you’re within three states of here, you damn well better make an appearance, or I _will_ know why. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean said, more relieved than he’d admit.

“Damn straight,” Catalina said, nodding sharply. “See you in the morning, Winchester.”

“See you,” Dean said.

 

~*~

 

So Dean and Sam went back to the family business – the undead alligators were a good first case, tricky but quick, and then they were back on the road. They usually found some reason, at least once a month, to head for the West Coast and drop in on Isabel and Catalina –under threat of dismemberment, of course. Dean and Sam made it to Sacramento in time for Isabel’s first word (“Mama”), second word (“No!”) and third word (“winseppa”), which they eventually figured out was Isabel’s rendition of “Winchester,” a fact that made Dean beam with joy and Sam snicker. She was a precocious baby, talking and crawling in a hurry, and Dean was pleased to notice that, even at six months, she still laughed at his jokes.

“If only you could teach your Uncle Sam that trick,” Dean cooed at Isabel.

“Don’t call me Uncle Sam, Dean, that’s weird. It makes it sound like I’m trying to get her to join the army or something.”

“Don’t listen to him, baby,” Dean told Isabel, shaking his head. “He just doesn’t understand my refined sense of humor like you do.”

“She’s a pretty happy baby,” Sam remarked to Catalina during their eight-month visit.

“I’d be pretty happy, too, if I got to watch Dean make a complete idiot out of himself once a month,” Catalina said, smirking. “Oh, wait… I do.”

By nine months, their visiting Sacramento had definitely turned into a “thing,” and Dean and Sam always made sure to have a little present every time they visited. Dean was really proud of this month’s present – a specially commissioned bib from Missouri that said “Forget Diamonds. Salt and Matches are a Girl’s Best Friends.” It was totally worth the twenty bucks just for the look on Catalina’s face.

“God help us,” she muttered when she saw it, passing her hand over her eyes. “Put that thing away until I decide what your punishment will be. Let me get Isabel.”

Catalina retrieved Isabel from her nursery and brought her into the foyer. When she saw Sam and Dean, she started squirming and gurgling.

“Sanandeem!” she giggled. “Mama, mama… sanandeem!”

“What’s she saying?” Dean asked.

Isabel pointed at the two of them, looking a little annoyed that they were so slow.

“San. An. Deem!” she said, and when Dean got it, he grinned ear to ear.

“That’s right, baby,” he told her, letting her chew a little on his finger. “San and Deem Winseppa are here.”

 

~*~

 

For Isabel’s first birthday, Sam and Dean made plans to take a whole week off and spend it with Catalina in Sacramento. Catalina pretend-grumbled about having to put up with their troublemaking, but when they got there, Dean noticed that the guest room now had two twin beds, so that nobody would have to sleep on the couch. When Catalina wandered into the guest room and saw him looking, she blushed and looked away.

“Don’t think this means I want you two idiots wandering in here whenever you feel like it,” she muttered.

“Right,” Dean said, grin splitting his face, not believing a word. “We already got a hotel room for the night,” he told her, “but we’ll pack up tomorrow and start cluttering up your nice apartment as soon as we possibly can, how’s that?”

Sam had taken a nasty two-story fall on their last job, a haunted canyon not far from Albuquerque, so he was not in the mood for much partying that first night. Dean noticed him wincing every time he laughed, and Catalina did, too.

“Winchester,” she said, “you look like shit.”

“Aw, thanks, Catalina,” Sam muttered. “I love you, too.”

“Go the hell home,” she told him, rolling her eyes. “I’ve got stuff to talk about with Dean for a while yet, but you are beat. In fact, if you want to stay here –”

Sam shook his head. “Thanks, but no. I’ll head back to the hotel. We’ve got the room anyway, and if you’ve got stuff to talk about with Dean, I don’t want you worrying that you’re going to keep me up. Let me say good night to Isabel, and then, if you don’t mind, I’ll take your car.”

Catalina just nodded and started clearing away the dinner dishes. This was another thing that broke Dean’s brain about Catalina – she would let just anyone drive her car! Granted, it was a piece of shit Camry, okay, but still! It was like… it was…

“It’s an abomination,” Dean growled under his breath.

“Sam,” Catalina said, giving Dean a dubious look, “I think your brother has rabies.”

“He’s had all his shots,” Sam called from down the hall in Isabel’s nursery. “Don’t blame me if they didn’t take.”

He emerged from the hallway, looking even more beat than before.

“Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow – Dean, you might as well stay here, okay?”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine on my own. Just need some rest.”

Catalina hugged him and handed over her car keys.

“Be well, Sam,” she said, smiling.

“You too,” Sam said. “Don’t sleep with Dean,” he called over his shoulder on his way out the door.

“As if!” Catalina called back.

Catalina and Dean cleaned up after dinner in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and then Catalina sent Dean to the living room while she brought Isabel from the nursery. They sat on opposite ends of the sofa for a minute, staring at Isabel’s face.

“So,” said Dean.

“So,” said Catalina.

“You had something you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Right.” Catalina looked a little nervous. “I’ve… maybe I’ve gotten ahead of myself, but I’ve been talking with my lawyer and we’ve made some plans.”

Dean looked sideways at her. “Plans? With your lawyer?” he said dubiously.

Catalina sighed. “I should start over.” She took a moment, getting her thoughts together, and then she turned to Dean, setting the sleeping Isabel on the couch between them.

“I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like I’ve been living on borrowed time, like any minute, it could all be over. And I let that stop me from doing a lot of things I really wanted to do – like having a baby,” she told him, looking a little sad and a little like she couldn’t believe she was telling him this.

“I’ve had… my life… my childhood… there are things you don’t know about me,” Catalina said, “but I’ve made a decision to stop running away from those things, to stop being afraid. I’m not going to let those parts of my past touch my new life with Isabel, with… with you and Sam.”

Dean just nodded, kind of overwhelmed.

“A week ago, my lawyer and I started looking for… trying to find…” She trailed off. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that things are going to start to change for me – and for you, too, if you want them to. My lawyer thinks that he can-”

Catalina broke off, and suddenly her face was transformed. Dean couldn’t keep track of all the different emotions that played across her face – sadness, for sure, and fear, but relief, too, and a bittersweet warm smile.

“What-”

“Sol,” Catalina said simply, as a static shock crackled across the room and loud boom from the front door punctuated her word.

Dean stared at the apartment’s front door, which was silent.

“What do you mean – Jesus!” Dean shouted as another deafening sound echoed from the door, cutting him off.

“I didn’t think this would happen so fast – I kind of hoped it wouldn’t happen at all,” Catalina murmured, half to herself, and then her eyes snapped back into focus.

“The wards and protections on this place will hold her for a few minutes,” Catalina said, calmly pulling a shotgun from a locked cabinet that Dean had never noticed before. “She’ll get through them eventually, but by that time, you and Isabel will be gone.”

“Who’ll get through them? What the hell is going on?” Dean asked, jumping every time the pounding sound tore through the apartment.

“Sol,” Catalina said again, pulling more weapons and ammo from the cabinet. “My sister. The feelers I sent out this week… well. It looks like I didn’t find her so much as… she found me.”

Dean looked at Catalina, bewildered, trying to process this information.

“Your sister? Your psychic sister, with the demon blood? You said she was dead!”

“I said I failed her. There are things worse than death.”

Dean stared at her.

“I told you, Dean, I’m like you – I always know where she is, how she feels, what she wants. I know that she is outside that door, that she’s mad, and that she’s come here for me, that she wants to hurt me, and hurt Isabel.”

Catalina was now equipped with a shotgun, a nine-millimeter, and a knife. She looked scared and sad and Dean wondered how long she’d been waiting for this day, scared of it and wanting it all at once.

“Let me help, I can-”

“No, Dean.” Catalina’s eyes were clear and her tone was firm. “Dean, you, more than anyone else… you understand. She’s my sister. I have to… it has to be me.” She never looked away from Dean’s eyes.

Dean thought about what he would do, if it were Sam coming to – if it were Sam. If he would let anyone else…

“No, yeah,” Dean said, voice low and rough, “I understand.”

The pounding sound was getting louder, but Catalina seemed unworried.

“Take Isabel and get her out of here,” she told Dean, efficiently bundling up the baby’s tiny form and depositing her in Dean’s shaking arms.

“You’re not who I’d have picked to raise my daughter,” she said bluntly, looking Dean full in the face.

“I know.”

“Don’t fuck up,” she told him brusquely, scrubbing at her face, which seemed suddenly wet.

Dean had nothing to say to that.

Catalina bent over little Isabel, gently stroking her soft cheek with one finger.

“Bye bye, baby. I love you. Be… be happy.” A few tears fell into the baby’s blanket before Catalina turned away. “Take care of her, Dean,” she said, intense and sad.

“I will,” Dean promised. She handed him a few bags – diapers and stuff, he assumed – and pushed him out the back door. When Dean took one last look at her before the door slammed shut, the apartment was shaking and shuddering like an earthquake, but Catalina stood sure and steady, loading silver shells into the shotgun one by one, eyes dry, never looking back.

Dean was only a block away when he heard the explosion. Isabel was awake, must have heard it, too, but she didn’t cry – just looked up at Dean with big wise eyes. _She doesn’t know her mother’s dead_, Dean thought. _She’d cry if she knew_. Dean pulled over and parked the Impala, then carefully, so carefully, picked up little Isabel and held her in his arms. If he could, he’d have cried for her, but the tears wouldn’t come – instead, he blocked out the sound of the sirens and rocked them both to sleep.

 

~*~

 

When Dean stumbled into the motel room at four in the morning, clutching a sleeping Isabel and the key to the Impala, the part of him that wasn’t numb was relieved to notice that Sam was right where he should be. Dean could see Sam sprawled out under the covers on the window-side bed, and it made something in his chest hurt, to look at his brother and his daughter, fast asleep, not broken yet by his bad news.

Dean wanted to let Sam sleep, but he needed to go get the bags of baby stuff from the car, and he really, really didn’t want to leave Isabel alone right now, for even a minute.

“Sam,” he whispered hoarsely, leaving Isabel curled up on the other bed. “Sam, wake up.”

Long years on the hunt had conditioned Sam, and he came awake quickly.

“Dean?” Sam whispered. “What are you doing here? I thought you were staying over at Catalina’s… Jesus, Dean, what time is it?”

Dean sagged onto the mattress, slumped against the headboard. He tried to find the words.

“Dean, you’re worrying me. And why are we whispering?”

Dean put his hand over his eyes.

“Catalina’s dead,” he said.

“What?”

“Catalina’s dead. Her sister killed her. Her crazy fucking psychic sister, showing up out of nowhere, and now Catalina’s dead.”

Sam shook his head.

“That can’t be – I thought her sister was dead?”

“Well,” Dean said, laughing a little hysterically, “she is now.”

Suddenly Sam went rigid, as if he’d been shot.

“Isabel,” he said, and his voice was terrible. “Isabel…”

“Is fine,” Dean said quickly. “She’s here, she’s right here. She’s alive. Nothing bad happened to her.”

Sam practically threw himself at the other bed, scooping up Isabel. He examined her for a minute, then turned to Dean, looking bewildered.

“She’s asleep. Her mother’s dead. How can she be asleep?”

Dean had no good answer for that. He knew what Sam meant – it seemed crazy that somebody could sleep through the end of their whole world – but Isabel didn’t know. She didn’t know anything right then.

“Can you hold on to her for a few minutes?” Dean said instead. “I want to go get the baby stuff out of the Impala.”

“Of course,” Sam said, not even looking up from Isabel’s tiny smooth face.

When Dean came back in, Sam was under the covers, half propped-up with pillows, Isabel in his arms. Dean was so, so tired. Sam chose just that moment to look up at Dean, and whatever he saw in Dean’s face made his eyes go soft.

“Come here,” he whispered, patting the bed on the other side of Isabel with his free hand.

Dean hesitated. It wasn’t that he and Sam had never shared a bed, but… somehow tonight it felt different. Charged, somehow, with meaning. Isabel snuffled in her sleep, and Dean made up his mind. He walked around to the side of the bed and crawled in, curling around Isabel like he and Sam were two cupped hands. She and Sam were both very warm.

“Sleep,” Sam told him. Their hands brushed as they both wrapped them around Isabel. “Sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Dean obeyed.

 

~*~

 

By the time Dean woke up in the morning, Sam was already up, feeding Isabel little spoonfuls of something green as he sat in the crappy motel chair and faced into the sun.

“What time is it?” Dean asked.

“Only ten in the morning,” Sam said, sounding just as tired as Dean. “What the fuck happened last night, Dean?”

“Catalina and her lawyer started trying to find her psychic sister last week, but whatever they did ended up with the sister finding Catalina instead. Catalina felt her coming, gave me Isabel, and told me to run.”

“And you did?” Sam said, sounding angry. “You just ran, and left her there?”

“What would you have done?” Dean asked, getting pretty angry himself. “You’d have left Isabel there, in the middle of a psychic death match? This isn’t about being a hero – Isabel comes first, always, she’s got to! That’s what being a dad is… what being a parent is. Dad’s the one who taught me that – but I guess you weren’t paying attention.”

Sam flinched, and Dean felt mean. He wanted to take it back, but the words wouldn’t come.

“No, you’re right,” Sam said quietly, after a minute. “Isabel comes first. I just… are you sure that… that Catalina is…?”

Dean nodded. His eyes felt scratchy. “Her apartment exploded, with her and the sister inside. She knew… she knew she wasn’t gonna make it.”

Sam didn’t say anything. He set aside the jar of green stuff and wiped up Isabel’s face with a tissue.

“What are we going to do, Dean?” he asked finally, and his voice cracked. “What the fuck are we going to do?”

Dean’s cell phone rang, breaking the moment, and Dean had to scramble to dig it out of his jacket pocket. When he answered it, the unfamiliar male voice on the other end of the phone said, “Dean Winchester?”

“Yeah.”

“My name is Mark Masalsky, and I’m Catalina Morales’ attorney.”

_Were_, Dean thought. _You _were_ her attorney._

“How did you get this number?” he asked.

“Ms. Morales gave it to me. Is Isabel alive?”

Dean flinched. He had tried not to think about it too hard – what would have happened if he hadn’t been there, if little Isabel had been in the apartment when…

“Yeah. Yeah… she’s alive.”

“And she’s with you?”

“Yeah, she is.”

The voice on the other end gave a shuddering sigh. “Thank God.”

For a moment, the phone was silent, but it didn’t last long.

“Listen to me. The first thing you need to do is go to the nearest police station with Isabel and alert them that she is alive. Where are you now?”

“The Days Inn by McClellan Air Force Base-”

“Okay. You’ll want to go to the Kinney Police Station on Maryville Boulevard. Can you find that?”

“Yeah, but-”

“Great. I’ll meet you there. If your brother is with you, I recommend that he stay at the hotel, just because I’m not entirely sure how this is all going to go down. And don’t tell the police anything until I get there, okay?”

“Yeah, I guess-”

“All right, see you there.”

Dean’s phone beeped.

“That motherfucker hung up on me,” Dean said, bemused. “Also, what the hell?”

“Who was that?” Sam asked.

“Catalina’s lawyer. He wants me to go to the police and tell them that Isabel’s not dead.”

Sam nodded.

“Probably a good call. Is he going to meet you there?”

“Yeah.”

“Then when you meet him, you should ask him about what’s going to happen to Isabel now – we never really talked about it while-” Sam’s voice stuttered to a halt. “While Catalina was alive,” he finished, voice raspy.

“Yeah,” said Dean, a lump in this throat. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

 

~*~

 

The police station had been pretty easy to find – what sucked was standing around in the lobby, holding his daughter, waiting for a total stranger to show up and tell him what was going to happen to them both. Dean had already freaked out at this lady who had come up to him and started touching Isabel’s face, and the officers behind the desk were giving him kind of funny looks.

A blond guy about Dean’s height came through the glass doors into the lobby and approached Dean, smiling cautiously.

“Hi, Dean. I’m Mark Masalsky – we spoke on the phone.”

Dean sized up the guy. He was middle-aged but in good shape, balding but not bad-looking.

“Yeah, listen, Mr. Masal-”

“Call me Mark,” the lawyer said, smiling.

“Okay, then listen, _Mark_ – for a bunch of reasons I don’t really want to go into right now, a police station is not a good place for me to be.” Dean might be legally dead, but he bet that most of these police officers had a pretty good memory for faces, and his wanted poster had been passed around for several months.

“I know,” Mark said. “That’s why you need these.” He handed Dean a card and a small booklet – a driver’s license and a passport, Dean could see. _Dean Harvelle_, he read.

“What the hell?”

“Congratulations, Dean. You’re Ellen Harvelle’s adopted son.”

Dean had barely started to put together _lawyer handing me fake IDs_ and _lawyer knows Ellen_ and _Ellen adopted me_.

“Say what?!”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Well, you can’t walk in there and tell them that you’re Dean Winchester, can you?”

“No-”

“Well then, let’s-” Mark began, striding off toward the front desk, obviously expecting Dean to follow.

Dean didn’t move. After a minute of watching Mark walk off without looking back, Dean called “Hey… _asshole_.”

Mark turned around, looking equally frustrated and confused. Dean walked up to him, getting right up in his face – or at least, as far in his face as Dean could with a baby in his arms.

“Catalina’s _dead_,” Dean said bluntly. “And I have no idea who the hell you are, but as far was I can tell, you don’t give a damn about me or Isabel or… to be honest, I don’t have a clue what it is that you _do_ give a crap about. And neither me or Isabel is going anywhere with you until I find out, so start talking, buddy.”

Mark stared hard a Dean for a minute, then nodded.

“That’s fair,” he said. “I’ll give you the short version – we don’t really have time for the long version. I’ve been Catalina’s lawyer for five years, and her friend for at least that long. She trusted me with the future of her child, with making sure that Isabel was taken care of. That’s what I’m here to do. We’ll have more time for explanations later, but suffice it to say that Catalina had very efficient and detailed plans for her possible death, and that, right now, the first step in those plans is to make sure that little Isabel doesn’t get declared legally dead. I mean, we could always fix it later, but trust me – it’s much more convenient to do it this way.”

“Fair enough,” Dean replied. “What’s the plan, lawyer man?” Dean still didn’t trust the guy totally – he still gave it even odds that it was this lawyer’s stupidity that was partly responsible for what happened to Catalina – but Dean could appreciate the value of a guy who knew how to work the system.

Mark cracked a smile. “We go in there, you tell them that, contrary to popular belief, Isabel Morales is alive, they verify it, you tell them who you are and what happened to Catalina – not the whole truth, obviously, but close enough – and then…” Mark gave Dean a serious look. “And then, you decide whether you want to be Isabel’s father or not.”

Dean started to say _hell, yeah, of course, are you nuts?_ But Mark waved him off.

“Don’t answer just yet,” he said. “There’s more going on under the surface here than you’ve seen so far. First things first – Isabel is alive.”

“Right.”

 

~*~

 

Of course, Mark didn’t give him any help with the specifics of what to tell the paunchy dude behind the desk, nothing that would keep him from making a dumbass out of himself.

“Umm… excuse me?” Dean said.

“State your concern,” Paunchy Dude droned.

“I, uh… I need to declare somebody, um… not dead.”

“What?”

Okay, now he had Paunchy Dude’s attention.

“Last night there was a house fire that killed Catalina Morales, and the papers said that her baby probably died in the fire, too, but, uh… she didn’t. I mean, this is her,” Dean said, gesturing awkwardly with the baby in his arms.

Paunchy Dude looked pretty skeptical.

“Wait here,” he told Dean, who looked over at Mark helplessly. Mark nodded reassuringly. “He’s going to go alert the detective in charge of investigating the fire – since there was an explosion, there’s no doubt that an investigation _is_ underway – and you can tell him or her your story.”

“My story, right,” Dean said. “What’s my story again?”

 

~*~

 

“I was visiting Catalina – and Isabel – when Catalina got word that her sister was in town. Catalina knew that her sister was bad news, so she asked me to take Isabel, get her out of the apartment until she thought it was safe again. Next thing I know, the papers are saying they’re both dead.”

The detective who was investigating the fire was exactly the kind of woman Dean would have hit on under other circumstances, but it seemed like she kind of thought he might have killed the mother of his child, so he figured he’d better keep it on a leash.

“Her sister, you say. This sister have a name?”

“Sol Morales,” Dean said. “Catalina was her older sister. Their parents were illegal immigrants.”

The detective nodded at a uniform who’d been standing by the door, and he nodded back and left.

“Well, the reason I’m not handcuffing you right now, Mr. Harvelle, is that we found two sets of remains in Ms. Morales’ apartment – and our experts say that both are Latina women, ages twenty-five to thirty. There’s enough soft tissue left for DNA testing, so it should be fairly simple to check out your story.”

Dean nodded, and Mark looked pleased.

“It’ll still take at least a few days – and maybe as much as a week – to get a result, so I’ll have to ask you not to leave Sacramento for the foreseeable future.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Mark assured her.

The detective left the interrogation room, and Dean and Mark stared each other down.

“So,” Dean said.

“So,” said Mark.

Both of them were carefully _not_ looking at the two-way mirror that took up most of one wall of the room.

“So you and your brother are hunters, I hear,” Mark said casually.

“Uh, yeah,” Dean said.

“You might be interested to know that representing… hunters… is something of a specialization of mine,” Mark continued. “That is, for example, how I became acquainted with your mother.”

Dean boggled. “My-”

“Yes, _Ellen_ is certainly a formidable hunter, is she not,” Mark said, through clenched teeth.

“Right, Ellen,” Dean said weakly. “And my sister, Jo… she’s a real pistol, all right.”

“Quite so.”

Dean processed this information.

“Did you ever meet this guy… one of my… mom’s… friends? John was his first name, I think, had two _really, really_ good-looking sons?”

Mark nodded. “I think I know who you mean, although I’m sad to say I never met the man. Not much for lawyers, from what I-”

Mark was interrupted by the return of the lady detective, who looked a little friendlier than last time.

“Well, I’ve got some good news, Mr. Harvelle… Your story is looking better and better. We just got the results back from a database search on Sol Morales – it turns out that she’s wanted by authorities in New Mexico for the murder of her father, Raimundo Morales. According to the state police, she blew up her childhood home four years ago – with her father inside.”

Dean felt like he’d been shocked with 10,000 volts all over again.

“Jesus,” he said, numbly.

The detective gave him a penetrating look.

“You didn’t know?”

“The way Catalina talked about her sister, I assumed she was dead,” Dean told the detective, truthfully. “When she told me her sister was in town and shoved Isabel in my arms, I thought for a minute she was crazy.”

“Right,” the detective said, still looking a little dubious. “Well, we will continue to investigate Sol Morales, but I’m sure you understand that you are, while not officially a suspect, certainly a… person of interest.”

Mark nodded, and poked Dean in the arm until he did the same.

“Mr. Harvelle is eager to cooperate with your investigation in any way,” Mark said.

_I am? _Dean thought, but he just nodded again.

“Wonderful,” the detective said dryly. “Then I’m sure he won’t object to answering some routine questions.”

Dean had this part down – he’d seen _Law and Order_.

“Of course not,” he told the detective, with an amiable grin. “Anything I can do to help.”

The detective’s glare told him what she thought of that.

“Mr. Harvelle, do you stand to benefit financially from Ms. Morales’ death?”

The thought had honestly never occurred to Dean.

“Uh… I don’t _think_ so…” Dean looked at Mark, silently begging for help.

“You don’t know?” the detective said skeptically.

“I… we never talked about it. I guess she had a will-” Dean looked again at Mark, who nodded, “-But I never knew what was in it. We weren’t _married_ or anything.”

Mark took over smoothly.

“Mr. Harvelle has not yet been apprised of the contents of Ms. Morales’ will, and to my knowledge, never discussed financial matters with Ms. Morales when she was alive. A small portion of Ms. Morales’ assets will become available to Mr. Harvelle if he receives and retains custody of their daughter, but that portion is minuscule compared to the sums held in trust for Isabel.”

The detective still looked a little nonplussed.

“I find it hard to believe that the two of you never discussed what would happen if she should pass away.”

Mark coughed.

“Ms. Morales was expecting that she would, in the next few years, find a permanent life partner with whom she would share custody of Isabel and hold assets jointly. Sadly, she passed away before such an opportunity presented itself. She did make extensive arrangements for her estate and her daughter in the event of her death, which she discussed with me, but she did not want to impose on Mr. Harvelle by placing him in a position where he would feel pressured to petition for custody of Isabel.”

The detective’s brow was pulled together so tightly Dean thought it might snap.

“I feel like we’re dancing around something here, and it’s setting every damn thing off kilter. Mr. Harvelle, what exactly was your relationship with Ms. Morales?”

Dean had figured that Mark would take this one but Mark just looked at him expectantly. Dean cleared his throat uncomfortably. He didn’t want to think too hard about Catalina right now – pretty, funny Catalina, who had been closer to him than anyone but Sam had ever gotten, as far as he could remember… Catalina, who he hadn’t been able to save.

“I loved her,” Dean said hoarsely, surprising himself. “Not, y’know… not… romantically, or anything. We were just friends. But she was… she was a really good mother, and she thought I was worth something – thought I was good enough to be a father. I don’t think anybody else ever has. Thought that, I mean.” Dean scrubbed at his eyes angrily. The goddamn institutional lighting in this hellhole was enough to make anybody’s eyes water.

The detective was looking at him with a lot more sympathy now, and Mark was nodding slowly.

“This information is not for public consumption, due to the prejudicial effect it might have on Isabel’s upcoming custody proceedings,” Mark said to the detective quietly, “but Mr. Harvelle is in a committed homosexual relationship, and therefore he will need to discuss the situation with his partner before coming to any firm decision about petitioning for custody of his daughter. That is, as far as I know, the only impediment to Mr. Harvelle’s assuming full responsibility for Isabel.”

Dean’s brain took a minute to process that… and then another minute trying not to choke on his own spit out of absolute shock once he _did_ get it. Fortunately by then the detective had left the room, muttering her condolences, and Dean was free to freak out at Mark in private.

“Um… _what the HELL?!_”

“Oh, what do you want from me,” Mark muttered. “The circumstances of your… donation weren’t what you’d call standard, okay? I had to think fast! There’s a lot more going on here than you know about, and it’s pretty much all more important than your incipient knee-jerk homophobic panic.”

Dean glared.

“I don’t know what incipient means, but I’m not homophobic, there’s nothing wrong with my knees, and I’m definitely not panicking!” Dean realized that his voice was pretty squeaky there by the end. Mark raised his eyebrow.

“Bite me,” Dean growled.

“Right,” Mark said, smirking. “Are you sentimentally attached to this interview room, or is it okay with you if we head for friendly territory?”

Dean thought about it.

“Yeah, why don’t we head for the hotel. Isabel could use a nap, I think, and Sam’s probably going batshit worrying by now.”

Mark nodded. “I’ll follow you.”

“Damn right,” Dean muttered as he carried Isabel out the door.

 

~*~

 

Sam was glad to see Dean and Isabel all in one piece and not arrested, that was pretty clear. Dean hadn’t thought before about how hard it must have been for Sam to let Isabel out of his sight after last night – he made extra sure that Sam got to hold Isabel right away. Once Sam seemed satisfied that the baby hadn’t suffered any life-changing trauma in the last few hours, Dean left Sam and Mark to do their lawyer mojo.

“Hey, you two talk about lawyery stuff – I’m going to put Isabel down for a nap.”

Of course, it took longer than Dean thought, like always, to get Isabel to sleep – finicky little baby, Dean thought fondly.

“You’re a bad influence on Isabel,” Dean told Sam as he came back to the kitchenette. “She’s turning into a little princess, just like you.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“I’ll leave you two to talk things over,” Mark said. “It’s good meeting you, Sam. Dean, I’ll give you a call when the police get the DNA results back, and we can move from there. Sound good?”

When Mark was gone, Dean threw himself into the chair across from Sam and rubbed his eyes a couple times.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, yeah. You know, just… police station – not my favorite place to spend a day.”

Sam grimaced. “I hear that.”

“The detective was hot, though.”

“Well, at least there’s that.”

“And the coffee was okay.”

“Small favors.”

“Mark told the police we were gay for each other.”

“I know.”

Dean boggled. “You know? He told you?”

Sam shrugged. “It’s a pretty important part of this whole thing – with our new identities, we’re not brothers, and there aren’t a lot of other reasons for two guys to be living together, you know?”

“Wait,” Dean said, leaving the crazy gay thing for a minute, “Our new identities, as in mine _and_ yours?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “You and I are both dead, Dean. The state of California may do a lot of crazy stuff, but at bare minimum, they don’t give custody of little girls to dead people. Besides, you got a new identity when Catalina put your name on Isabel’s birth certificate.”

Dean frowned. “She did?”

“No, Dean, she put down, ‘the corpse of Dean Winchester, mass murderer,’ in the blank where it says ‘Father’s name.’”

“Jeez,” Dean muttered, “You don’t have to be a bitch about it. It’s not my job to think of this lawyer shit.”

Sam grinned. “Fair enough. You want to hear the rest of it tonight, or do you want to hit the hay?”

Dean sighed and slouched in his chair. “Oh, might as well get it over with. Hit me with your best shot, Boston Legal.”

“Right,” Sam said, looking over his notes from his conversation with Mark. “First things first, we have new identities as Dean Harvelle and Sam Singer-”

“How come you get to be Bobby’s son?” Dean whined.

“As I was saying,” Sam went on, glaring, “our new identities don’t have a lot of back-up data – tax forms, old medical records, that sort of thing – but they’re pretty solid, and they’ll stand up in a custody hearing. Which brings us to the second thing – custody.” Sam hesitated. “Dean… do you want custody of Isabel?”

“What the hell are you thinking, Sam? Of course I do! What kind of question is that?” Dean shot up out of his chair and started pacing.

“Chill out, man. I had to ask,” Sam said, holding up his hands. “Dean, I don’t know if you’ve really thought about what kind of changes you’re going to have to make to your life to fit Isabel into it. Mark says that, to get custody, you’re going to need a permanent residence and a job, for at least a year. You can’t just run around risking your life all the time, either – if something happens to you, who’ll take care of Isabel?”

“You will, stupid,” Dean said, puzzled. Sam didn’t say anything, and Dean started to get angry. “What are you saying, Sam? That if something happened to me, you’d just fuck off and leave Isabel with strangers? That you don’t…” Dean could hardly get the words out. “That you don’t… don’t want her?”

“No,” Sam said, urgently. “No. Of course I want her. Of course I do. But it’s a lot more complicated than that. Dean… you’re Isabel’s dad. And I’m… not. Not biologically, not legally-”

“You think any of that shit matters to me?” Dean demanded. “You think any of that shit is gonna matter to her? You gotta be with me on this, Sam, all the way. Because I want to do the right thing, but I think we both know that, all by myself, I’d make a pretty shitty parent.”

“That’s not true,” Sam murmured.

“No?” Dean asked, feeling raw, feeling like he wanted to vomit. “Let’s take a look, Sam. I have no job, no home, no life. The longest relationship I’ve ever had is with a woman I never kissed who only wanted me for my genes, and even _she_ admitted that I was stupid, easy, and probably an alcoholic.”

“Shut up,” Sam said, sounding angry.

“And, you know?” Dean continued, ignoring him. “I never cared about any of that shit before. Hell, I was proud of it.”

“Shut. Up.” Sam’s voice was low and gritty.

“But the way things stand right now, nobody with half a brain would trust me with their kid. Hell, _I_ wouldn’t trust me with my kid.”

“You’re wrong,” Sam shouted, “And if you think that’s all there is to you, then that’s your goddamn problem. But I don’t think that, and don’t you _dare_ say that Catalina thought that! She loved you. She trusted you with her kid, and I think she’s got a hell of a lot more than half a brain.”

Dean sighed.

“Catalina trusted me with Isabel because she knew that you wouldn’t let me fuck up too badly. And I trusted myself with Isabel because I knew it, too. Or I thought I did. But now you’re acting like you…” Dean scrubbed his hand over his face. “Man, I don’t know what you’re acting like. But I’ve gotta know you’re with me. You’ve got to be a hundred percent with me.”

Sam put his hands on Dean’s shoulders.

“I am, man, I am. I’m with you. I just…” He looked away. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m assuming… I know that Isabel’s yours, I would never try to interfere, to get in the way-”

“Are you kidding me? No. No way, man,” Dean said, shaking his head back and forth. “Isabel’s not mine. She’s _ours_. She’s gotta be. So you’ve gotta get this dumb idea out of your head that just because I jerked off in a bar bathroom in Reno, that I’m special to Isabel and you’re not. We’ve gotta be partners, here, Sammy – or we might as well give up and hand Isabel over to Mark to find some normal, boring family to take care of her. Hell, maybe we still should. But I’m not gonna. Not as long as you’re with me all the way.”

“I am,” Sam said, and Dean saw that he was smiling just a little. “For as long as you need me to be.”

“For good,” Dean said, in a tone that allowed no argument.

“For good, then,” Sam echoed.

Dean blew out all the breath in his lungs at once.

“Did we wake up Isabel?” he asked.

Sam stole a quick peek around the corner.

“Nah. She looks happy as ever.”

“Good.”

Dean suddenly realized that Sam’s hands were still on his shoulders and their faces were very close.

“Dude,” he said, feeling a little weird about it, “gimme some room to breathe, jeez.”

Sam backed off, grinning a little.

“Fine… jerk.”

“Bitch,” Dean grumbled.

“Is that what you want them to put on the marriage license?” Sam asked, looking just a little too jolly for Dean’s taste.

“The _what_?!”

“Oh, sorry,” Sam said, doing a pretty bad job of pretending to look apologetic. “I guess it’s technically a ‘domestic partnership license.’”

“Get out,” Dean said, feeling a terrible sensation of rising dread. “Get out.”

“Well, if you were serious about us having equal custody and me taking care of Isabel if you ever can’t…” Sam trailed off, grinning. “Well, then that’s the way it’s going to be.”

“You’re enjoying this, you sick bastard,” Dean said, groaning.

“Careful, now,” Sam said, only proving Dean’s point, “That’s verbal spousal abuse. I could have you arrested for that.”

“I’ll show you spousal abuse, you little bitch,” Dean growled, throwing himself at Sam, who dodged, laughing.

“You’re going to get domestic assault charges all over your brand-new, squeaky-clean criminal record!” Sam scolded while Dean chased him around the hotel room. Isabel started crying, and they both froze, guiltily.

“We’re going to suck at this just a little, aren’t we?” Dean said glumly.

“Just a little,” Sam said, as he picked up Isabel and started to bounce her against his shoulder.

“We’re going to miss Catalina a lot, too,” Dean said, more quietly.

“Yes,” said Sam, equally quietly.

“But in the end, we’re gonna be okay?” Dean hadn’t mean for it to sound like a question, but his voice turned up at the end, and he turned to look at Sam, who was cradling Isabel’s tiny, wailing body in his huge arms.

“Yeah,” Sam said, and he was looking at Isabel, but Dean knew the words were for all three of them. “Yeah. In the end, we’re gonna be okay.”

  
THE END


End file.
